On the last day of the joyful ten Flood had gone with Rosamund on snowshoes across the valley to carry something to Mrs. Allen. Snow had fallen during the night, and every bough of pine and spruce and fir had its burden of downy white. The two paused, when they had come past Father Cary's wood-lot, to look down upon the valley.
They stood for a moment or so without speech. Flood looked from the snow-covered fields to the face beside him, as if to compare one loveliness with another; then he drew a deep breath.
"Well," he said, as they went on again, "I'm sorry to be leaving all this!"
For a moment she did not reply; she looked up at him once or twice, and he divined that she had something to say which she did not quite dare to put into words. They had become very good friends, thanks to the freedom of the out-of-door life of the past days. He laughed.
"Go on, please! Don't mind saying it! I haven't any feelings!"
"Oh," she protested, laughing, "I was not dreaming of hurting your feelings! I was only thinking how—how curious it is that you should—should care so much for what you are going back to."
But he did, nevertheless, show himself a little hurt at that. "Why shouldn't I like it?" he asked. "Do I seem such a savage?"
"Oh, precisely not!" Her mood was kind. "You are not a savage. You are very nice—I'm very glad I've found out how nice you are. But that's just what makes me wonder, you see, how you can like it!"
"Like being nice?"
"No—of course not! Like what you're going back to. New York. Cecilia! Oh—all of that—you know what I mean, don't you?"